


At Dawn

by Diane_C



Category: Aubrey-Maturin Series - Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander - All Media Types, Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
Genre: Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-01-25
Packaged: 2017-11-26 21:36:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/654650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diane_C/pseuds/Diane_C
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack and Stephen have an early morning conversation.</p>
            </blockquote>





	At Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> After reading and re-reading Patrick O’Brian’s wonderful Aubrey/Maturin series, I felt at a loss and consoled myself by writing fic. Since coming up with good first lines is often tough for me, I decided to borrow quotes directly from the books to kick things off -- so the opening words in italics are O'Brian's. (No spoilers for the series.)

 

  

 

 

**At Dawn**

  
  
_"Are you awake?" asked Jack Aubrey in a hoarse whisper through a crack in the door.  
  
"I am not," said Stephen. "Nor do I choose to swim."_   
  
"It's just now dawn." The door creaked slowly wider. "Water's clear and warm as milk...."  
  
"Milk is not clear," muttered Stephen, drawing up his blanket.  
  
"I didn't say it was."  
  
"You did, you said-- Never mind. Jack, I am profoundly asleep."  
  
"Resting in the arms of Icarus, eh? Well, I'll leave you to it," said Jack as he entered. "Say, do you still have my second-best cutlass? I want it with me. There's a report from above of a fin in the water, though Finkral's a fool and I don't believe him. He'd cry sharks in a mill pond. Still, forewarned is four armed, and what could be better than four arms when dealing with a shark, am I right?"   
  
Stephen grunted something indistinct and hunched his shoulders higher, his eyes tighter, for Jack's voice had completely lost its hush as he searched the diminutive cabin. “Not under the desk,” said Jack. “You don’t by any chance sleep with it, do you? Ha ha. What the hell is that?”  
  
“To what do you refer?”  
  
“To that hairy thing on your neck.”  
  
Stephen groped inquiringly. “It is a marmoset,” he concluded. “A _pygmy_ marmoset.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Because he is very small.”  
  
“I mean why is it here, why’s it clasped to your neck like a foul growth?”  
  
“His reasons are his own, the creature, but I presume he likes the warmth. He is a frequent visitor.”  
  
“Ain’t he Thompson’s beast?”   
  
“Thompson seems to think so. Now, Jack, good morning to you. Enjoy your swim.” Stephen rolled to his other side, the marmoset adjusting with sleepy patience to the movement. The cot swayed and there was a soft clattering sound.  
  
"Hey, Stephen," said Jack, coming near and stooping, "you dropped a... oh. You dropped your... this."  
  
Stephen opened an eye. In the broad palm before him lay a string of ten dark beads with a ring at one end and a slender cross at the other. He took it silently from Jack's hand and brought it beneath the folds of his blanket.  
  
A bell chimed on deck, followed by other early-morning sounds. Jack coughed quietly and ran a hand through his loose hair. He moved his towel from one shoulder to the other, gazing about in the darkness, possibly for a hovering cutlass.   
  
"Will you swim now? Or sit?" murmured Stephen after a time. "Or will you continue to loom above me in that inquisitive and toweringly naked fashion? I do not have your blessed knife. I returned it to you last week."  
  
"Did you? Perhaps so." Jack wrapped the towel round his waist. "Stephen," he said casually, "may I see that again?"   
  
"See what?"  
  
Jack answered by touching the blanket above Stephen's hand.  
  
A bold request. Dr Maturin slanted a look upward, frowning slightly: the Captain seemed engaged in a mild, internal skirmish between curiosity and courtesy. Stephen had noticed long ago that this was not an infrequent battle within Jack. Courtesy nearly always won. Nearly always.  
  
"Why do you wish to see it?"  
  
"Oh, no reason," said Jack, pulling the small desk chair to him and sitting. "Never seen it before. I assume it's a... um. For prayer and so on? Handsome little thing, and it is rather different, isn't it. It ain't like your other one."  
  
"And what would you know of my 'other one'? I do not display it."  
  
"Well, I know it's rather grand. Coral and gold, maybe? And quite a lot more beads. I've seen you with it when church is rigged and you go off with the other-- with the others."   
  
"And do you watch us, so? The other, the others.... Jack, I am asleep, and a milk-clear sea awaits you. Perhaps also a shark."  
  
"Are you cross with me, Doctor?" Jack asked earnestly, tilting his head to peer at him in the gloom. Maturin looked back at him, coolly, motionless in his cot. The marmoset’s gaze was reproachful. "I beg pardon if I'm impertinent, Stephen. I don't try to be. And you invited me to sit, you know."  
  
"But I did not imagine you would accept the offer."  
  
"Well, that proves what you know, eh?" Jack said absurdly, and he smiled with persistence into Stephen's face.  
  
Feeling the inevitable thaw in his reserve under the onslaught of Jack's good nature, Stephen sighed and pushed himself up on his pillow, the displaced marmoset grasping his nightshirt and nestling upon his bosom. Stephen stroked its tiny body with one knuckle as he watched a rippling patch of pale, pale light glide along the bulkhead. Beneath the blanket, he wound the rosary between his fingers.   
  
"Jack," he said with care, "I do not wish to wound, but... at any other unguarded moment you would dismiss this with contempt as the 'indecent trappings of Popery'. No, my dear, do not shake your head, you have used those words in my hearing before. You will understand my reluctance, therefore, to satisfy what I must assume is a peculiar interest on your part -- a sudden sort of illicit fascination, perhaps."  
  
" _Contempt_ , Stephen?" breathed Jack. The word had fallen like a blow. "I've spoken unthinking from time to time, I know I have, and I am sorry for it. But never in life have I felt contempt for you. Never for you." He glanced up, smiling apologetically, and touched Stephen's shoulder. "I shan't pry. I daresay I wanted to see it simply because it's yours, and upon my word that's scrub-like and rude. But I did think it pretty."  
  
A pause: heavy, but quite brief, as Dr Maturin studied his friend: eyes a faint blue gleam, gold hair limned with dawn. He reflected, not for the first time, upon the correlation between darkness, shadow, and the taking of conversational liberties, the sharing of confidences. He reflected upon Jack.   
  
" _An Paidrin Beag_ ," Stephen said at last, his hand emerging into view. "The Little Rosary. It is a pretty thing, sure, in its way."  
  
The rosary lay in Stephen's open palm, the ring worn round his thumb, and Jack, with a glance for permission, slipped it free. "The beads are polished horn," said Stephen. "The ring is bone, the cross bronze, as you see."  
  
"Ain't it charming. It looks old."  
  
"It is old. It was my father's, and his father's before him."  
  
" _Was_ it now?" said Jack with real interest, for Stephen spoke rarely about his father. "Was it _really_?" As though fearing his avidity might earn disapproval, Jack moderated his tone to something more seemly and continued, "A fine thing, to have a father's keepsake."  
  
"Yes. Certainly."   
  
"It's much smaller than your other one. Why is that, I wonder? Do forgive my ignorance, Stephen."  
  
"It is small for a reason, sure. It is small so that it may be concealed in the hand while praying."  
  
"To be piously modest, I gather."  
  
"No: to be prudently discreet. This is an Irish penal rosary, Jack. It is small of necessity, to aid in the private observance of an outlawed religion."  
  
"Ah. I see. Meant to be shipped in secret." Discomfited, Jack gestured. "To avoid...."   
  
"Persecution, yes: imprisonment, torture, death."   
  
Jack nodded.   
  
Taking it gently from him, Stephen said, "The ring is moved from thumb to finger to finger, thus, as each decade of the rosary is prayed. Not _years_ , joy," smiling a little at Jack's expression, "A decade is ten: ten beads, ten repetitions, do you see? A decade counted on each finger, the beads hidden in the hand."  
  
"I see, yes. A clever thing. Capital."   
  
"I conceive," said Stephen, looking closely at him, "that I have told you more than you wish to know. Just so. I will only observe that, indeed: you did ask."  
  
"No no! Not at all, Stephen. I am glad to learn of it, most glad." Whether Jack was made more ill at ease by this perspective, new to him, of life under Penal Law or by the idea of Maturin and his ancestors furtively praying was unclear. What was clear was that a feeling of obscure and unwelcome guilt had settled upon him. He smiled to dispel his awkwardness and asked, "Did your other one, the splendid one, belong to your father as well, Stephen?"  
  
"No. No, it did not. It was a gift to me from my godfather, who had it from the Lord Abbott of Montserrat. It is very fine, and I treasure it."   
  
"And is it coral and Spanish gold?"  
  
"Aye, it is: coral, crystal, and true gold."  
  
"Very grand indeed. Will you show it to me sometime?"  
  
"I might."  
  
"I would like that, Stephen," said Jack. "It sounds princely. I can see why you use it most often."  
  
"Can you? Leoncito, no," Stephen murmured, lifting the dark beads out of the marmoset's miniature grasp. "I use that one most often, Jack, because I prize this one more."  
  
Jack inclined his head. He followed the marmoset's bird-like motions as it watched the dangling rosary disappear into Stephen's hand. The animal sprang onto Stephen's closed fingers and coiled its long tail round his wrist, looking into his face beseechingly. "Your rodent prizes it, too," Jack said. "And why shouldn't he, eh? Good for his little pygmy soul, if it ain't unChristian to say it."  
  
"Leoncito is not a rodent, he is a primate, aren't you, honey dear? Observe his dexterous, prehensile hands, his intelligent eyes so large in his face, his reduced snout, his rounded cranium."  
  
"Primate, is he? Well, what's in a name. Call him a rodent and he'd smell as sweet. Though, dear me, the little chap ain't rose-scented, is he. I don't know how you can stand him clinging on you like that."  
  
"Is he fragrant? I hadn't noticed. Now tell me, Jack, now that I am dragged wide awake and could conceivably swim: tell me, what species, what variety or _sort_ of shark does Finkral claim to have seen?"  
  
"Oh, the sort with teeth, no doubt," said Jack, standing, "But it's all stuff. You'll join me, then? Heroic of you! Bring my cutlass like a good fellow, won't you, Stephen?"  
  
"Captain Aubrey, I do not have your cutlass. As I have told you, I returned it last week."  
  
"Ah. I must have forgotten. And why I stuck it behind your sea-chest I can't recall either, but there it stands, you know." Jack grasped the hilt on his way out the door, calling back with a private smile, "See you in the water, Doctor."  
  
~end~  
  
(opening quote from _The Wine-Dark Sea_ , page 74)


End file.
